We illustrate the influence of an external periodic force and noise on a physical system by the example of an oscillator. These two forces seem to be the reverse of each other, since the latter leads to disorder while the former works in an orderly fashion. Nevertheless, it is shown that they may influence a system in a similar way, sometime even substituting for one another. These examples serve to illustrate one of the main achievements of twentieth-century physics, which has established that deterministic and random phenomena complement rather than contradict each other.